Conventionally, a medical patient obtains a written script for a prescription drug from a physician to address the patient's malady. The patient carries the written script to a pharmacy. The pharmacy fills the prescription. The patient makes payment and picks-up the prescription drug at the pharmacy. The price paid by the patient is the pharmacy's charge for the drug less any covered benefit under the patient's insurance. The pharmacy collects the covered benefit amount from the insurer. Streamline of this conventional prescription drug delivery process would benefit patients, and also pharmacies and other health providers.
In this conventional prescription drug delivery scheme, the pharmacist typically instructs the patient in proper use of the drug at point of pick-up by the patient at the pharmacy. During the patient's visit to the physician's office, the physician may also provide the patient with drug use and protocol instruction. These instructions (whether from pharmacist and/or physician) may be verbal, written, or combination. Typical instructions may include proper drug use procedures, regimen schedule, importance of regimen compliance, and others. After the patient's contact with the pharmacist and physician, the patient must retain and recollect the instructions, in whatever form received. Often, the patient's only next opportunity to confirm the instructions is a subsequent face-to-face contact with the physician or pharmacist, such as through a later physician office or pharmacy visit for a medication check-up or prescription refill.
Physicians, pharmacies, insurers, and other pharmaceutical and health providers are interested in targeting helpful and applicable information to prescription drug patients. Time and access constraints of these providers limit opportunity for disseminating such information to the patient. Benefit insurers, for example, wish to encourage patient compliance to drug therapy regimen and to promote healthy practices. Physicians desire greater access to patients for increased awareness of patient efforts and concerns during drug therapy, such as would assist improving and varying drug treatment as appropriate. Pharmacies similarly wish to assist patients by providing helpful targeted information, addressing patient questions, and promoting health and marketing initiatives.
Patients desire access to uniquely targeted information to gain knowledge about specific prescription drugs and options and to assist the patient's medication therapy, proper drug usage, and health practices. Patient access to credible sources of information has conventionally been limited because periods of the patient's direct contact with physicians, pharmacists and other health providers are often time constrained. Patients, moreover, may not have ability to assess credibility of information that may be available from third party sources. Additionally, even where the patient has been provided credible relevant information (such as by physician, pharmacy or other reliable source), patients may misplace such information or tend to disregard the information if not readily and easily accessible. Targeted drug and health information, uniquely relevant to the patient and applicable prescription, would be beneficial if readily accessible to patients.
Cellular telephones and other wireless devices are a prevalent mode of communication for many consumers. These consumers include prescription drug patients and patient caregivers. Cellular devices can provide features for voice calls, messaging, calendar, scheduling, Internet access, and other operations. Cellular telephones, for example, in addition to voice call capabilities, often have short message service (SMS), multimedia message service (MMS), enhanced message service (EMS), wireless access protocol service (WAP), and/or other messaging features for sending and receiving mobile text and multimedia communications.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide new and improved systems and methods for communicating targeted uniquely relevant information and streamlining prescription drug delivery to prescription drug patients. It would also be desirable to limit burden to patients, as well as to physicians, pharmacies, insurers and other providers, of prescription drug delivery, drug cost and drug therapy management.